UGC mulls legal recourse against Kerala HC ruling on NET

After a number of candidates approached Kerala High court, it declared as illegal the new norms fixed by UGC for the NET.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is mulling "legal recourse" against the Kerala High Court decision declaring as illegal the new norms of qualifying marks fixed for National Eligibility Test (NET) for college and university lectureship, conducted in June this year.

"We are thinking on a legal course of action," a senior UGC official said, not wishing to be named.

He, however, said that a new notification with regard to the procedure and criteria for declaration of result of UGC NET to be held on Sunday has been announced on commission's website.

UGC had suddenly fixed the higher aggregate marks for three categories just before the announcements of results of the examination held in June 2012. After a number of candidates approached Kerala High court, it declared as illegal the new norms fixed by UGC for the NET. The court had held that fixing of higher aggregate marks for three categories, that too just before the announcements of results, cannot be justified as the same was "not supportable by law".

It also declared that all those who have obtained minimum marks prescribed in the notification have cleared NET and appropriate follow up action be taken to issue certificates to them within one month.

By changing the standards at the final stage and just before declaration of results, "it can be definitely be seen that it affected adversely the expectations of a large number of candidates", the court had said.

As per the new norms, candidates in general category have to score aggregate of 65% in all three NET papers to be eligible for college and university lectureship while OBC candidates need to score 60% and SC/ST candidates 55%.

Previous norms had stipulated that the general category had to get 40% in Paper I and Paper II and 50% in Paper III. In case of OBC, SC/ST students, the qualifying percentage was 35, 35, 45 and 35, 35, 40 in all three papers. The declaration of new norms had been opposed by students who appeared in the examination in June this year.